Accompanying their church choir, a young pianist named John Stephens, later known as John Legend, and his brother were a two-person orchestra.

“I didn’t have bass or guitar or anything playing with me,” recalls Legend, who began playing in the church his mom was the choir director of at age 7. “And so I was literally all of the melodic instruments, and my brother played the drums. I had to carry a lot of the rhythm, the bassline, anything that was melodically happening. And so I’m used to putting a lot of information into what I’m playing on the piano.”

As part of his current tour, dubbed “A Night of Songs And Stories,” Legend, now 45, makes a stand this weekend with just his voice and a grand piano in a much bigger room than his hometown church. Saturday at 8 p.m., the Springfield, Ohio native performs at the 8,000-capacity Orion Amphitheater in Huntsville, Alabama. Tickets at axs.com.

From his sanctified roots, Legend built a superstar career in pop, R&B and beyond. He’s won 12 Grammys, including three for his now-classic 2004 debut album “Get Lifted.” More recently, his eighth album, 2020′s “Bigger Love,” won for Best R&B Album.

Along the way, Legend lent his talent to other stars’ recordings, including piano for Lauryn Hill’s 1998 hit “Everything is Everything,” when he was still a teenager, and backing vocals for Jay-Z cut “Encore” and Alicia Keys’ 2003 smash “You Don’t Know My Name.”

The handsome University of Pennsylvania grad was also the first Black man to become an “EGOT” winner — that rare air of artists who’ve won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. He’s also married to supermodel, author and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, with whom he has four children. Legend’s fame swelled further after he became a coach on TV singing competition “The Voice” in 2019. If he wasn’t so charming and talented, it would be easy to hate him for all this.

On a recent evening, Legend connects with me for a phone interview from Los Angeles. “I’m sitting in the piano room in our home,” Legend says, “which is where I wrote all the songs for the last album, [sweet and soulful 2024 children’s LP] ‘My Favorite Dream.’ And it’s where all my Grammys and stuff are, so this is a good room.” Edited excerpts below.

The song “Ordinary People” was an early toehold for your career. It’s a song that’s basically vocals and piano, which is the format for this tour. The lyrics talk about relationships in a way a lot of people relate to. Do you have a cool story about writing “Ordinary People”?

It’s funny you mentioned that one particularly, because I talk about it a lot in the show, and I tell the story of how we wrote it. And it started out as a Black Eyes Peas song. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize.

I was with the same management as the Black Eyes Peas at the time when I wrote it, and so will.i.am of [Black Eyed Peas], and I had written together a bit before, including “She Don’t Have to Know” for the “Get Lifted” album.

But we’d also written for the Black Eyed Peas before, and he really enjoyed writing with me. And we were supposed to be writing for the Black Eyed Peas when we wrote the chorus for “Ordinary People.”

After a while living with the chorus of the song, I reached back out to Will and said, “You know what, I want to keep that one for myself.” And so I ended up writing the verses and writing it as a ballad rather than a hip-hop chorus and made it my own song. And the rest is history.

Have you composed any of your songs on a keyboard besides the piano? Maybe like on a Hammond organ or a Clavinet [an instrument known for its usage on Stevie Wonder classic “Superstition”] or a Rhodes [Fender electric piano] or whatever?

Oh, wow. I’ve definitely written on the Rhodes before, and I owned a Rhodes for a long time, and I would play live with the Rhodes quite a bit. So songs like “Stay With You,” and a lot of stuff from “Get Lifted” were on a Rhodes.

As a performer, you exude this calm confidence. Obviously, you’ve always put in tens of thousands of hours on the mic and piano. But what’s the last show you were nervous for?

I’m a very not-nervous type of person. I would say I never get nervous for my concerts because I always feel super comfortable and excited for them, and I feel really confident in the preparation that we put in prior to the show.

The only time I get a little nervous is before like a big TV performance where it’s just one song, you know? Even then I’m not super nervous, but that’s the most nerves I feel. It’s harder to get it all right in those two-and-a-half minutes on national TV because you don’t really get to warm up into it. There’s no rapport that you have with the audience in the same way that you have with your own show, your own concert, where people paid to see you. Those are only times when I get a little nervous.

Being a coach on “The Voice” for so many years now, was there some advice you got from a mentor in the business early in your career that’s impacted how you coach these new artists on the show?

I always tell people that Quincy Jones says, “Steal from the best,” which means, in my interpretation of it, that it’s OK to have influences, and your influences should be the best. You know, study the greats and learn from them, and you’ll never be exactly like them, but take different tidbits from each of your favorite artists and combine that with your own personal story. And I think that kind of combination ends up being who you are as an artist.

That unique chemistry of your influences and your own story, I think, helps you figure out the artist that you are. And so I think that idea of really studying the greats and borrowing things from the way they do things, whether it’s the way they sing, the way they write, the way they play, and having all of those influences come together to make the artist that you are is good advice for any new artist.

Has being a coach on “The Voice” influenced you as an artist in your own career?

When I think about the gratitude I feel for my opportunity of being a coach on this show is that because I get a chance to give so much advice to new artists, I think about that advice myself.

I end up kind of looking in the mirror and saying, “How can you improve yourself as an artist and take some of that feedback that you give the artist you work with and turn it to yourself?” And I think it’s helped me become a better performer and a better artist.

Speaking of your artistry, you did the song “Glory” with Common for the soundtrack for “Selma” [the 2014 film about the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led civil rights march in Alabama]. When you play “Glory” live now at your shows, has that song gained resonance in the 10 years since that film came out, given all the stuff that’s happened in the world?

One of the interesting things is when we wrote it, we talked about Ferguson [the 2014 shooting of an 18-year-old Black man Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri by a white police officer] in the song. And so we were always thinking about Dr. King and John Lewis and everybody who marched back in Selma in the ‘60s. But we always had in mind that 50 years later, we still were seeing marches in the streets around police brutality, around justice, around equality, and that we wanted to evoke that spirit from the ‘60s, but also say that we needed that spirit still of standing up for what is right. And I think we still need it.

We saw a lot of kind of introspection and institutional change, particularly after the George Floyd murder, and then we saw since then, I think, a lot of people kind of backlashing against that kind of change, and the whole anti-woke movement and all those things you’ve seen happen in the past few years. And people trying to ban books and not teach African American history in its fullness. and American history in its fullness. You know, the good and the bad, which is what history is supposed to be.

You’ve seen that backlash gain power over the past few years. And so, yeah, we still need “Glory.” We still need to remember the work of Dr. King. We still need to realize their vision for what a true, just and beloved community could be, and I think this song is still really relevant now, as are all the messages of Dr. King, for sure.

On this tour, you’ve been doing some interesting covers in the set, including “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley. He’s known for his songs, powerful performances and human rights activism. But what’s something underrated about Bob Marley’s vocal harmonies and music, since on “Redemption Song” it was just Marley’s voice and guitar playing?

Yeah, I think part of the beauty is in the simplicity. Like, none of the chords are really complex, but there’s a beauty in that, and there’s an honesty and a poetry in how simple, you know, the chord structures and musical arrangements are. I think that was part of the appeal. That’s what made it work so well and be so universal.

You’re also playing on this tour “Used to Love U,” your 2004 debut single. Recently, you performed Prince’s classic “Let’s Go Crazy” with Sheila E. at the Democratic National Convention. I’ve always wondered if the the single letter “U” in the title “Used to Love You” was a nod to Prince.

Well, no, not intentionally, but he did have a way of using that “U” a lot. That was one of his favorite little things to do in a lot of his songs. But [for “Used to Love U”] I liked the symmetry of starting with the “U” and ending with the “U.” When I looked at it, it just felt like that was the way it was supposed to look. If it was a true homage to Prince, I would have had then used the number two [instead of “to”]. [Laughs]

I was going to ask what you remember about putting together your classic song “All of Me.” But while getting ready to talk with you I read on social media where you’d posted about writing the song in L.A., and how the first time you sang “All of Me” for your wife Chrissy Teigen, you whispered the song’s lyrics in her ear – and, by the way, no fair, man.

[Laughs] No fair, right?

What’s another song Chrissy really likes hearing you play and sing around the house?

She really loves “Wonder Woman.” And she really loves the song on the new children’s album, “Always Come Back,” and she was a part of the song “L-O-V-E,” and she loves that one. So those are a few, I would say – oh, and I’ve got to mention “So High.” Especially when we do it at the show. It’s very rousing and big and beautiful when we do it with the band, and so she loves that one, too.